


Mutual Understanding

by icemakestars



Series: •Tumblr Prompts• [14]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Angst, Break Up, M/M, Vomiting, blood mention, sad boys being sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 18:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11236638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icemakestars/pseuds/icemakestars
Summary: It may have sounded like an agreement, but Gray did not feel convinced at all.





	Mutual Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> Another short thing from my tumblr (@ice-bringer). It feels so good to be writing again, now I just have to start on my chaptered fics that need updating........... ew.

“We need a break.” Natsu’s voice breaks, but he still manages to meet Gray’s eyes. 

Gray isn’t impressed by this, by the strength and the swagger that Natsu so heartily possessed, because he could see it crumbling like old brick-work. Natsu walked with a limp, and his blood and tears mingled along his dirty face. 

Gray nods, numb, not able to do much else. His parents, his teacher, the closest thing he had to a sister… everyone left Gray in the end, so why would his lover be any different? He was like poison ivy; beautiful but toxic, something that people could only endure for a fleeting moment. 

“Just a year,” Natsu continues, but Gray is deaf to it, deaf with a nostalgic grief but a pain so fresh, so raw, that he’s amazed he isn’t crippled by it. “A year for me to train, to get stronger. We need that time, Gray. Time to grow… time to heal.” 

He glances at the smoking fragments of Igneel’s burning body, and Gray follows the line of sight. His own father was standing close to where Igneel’s body was smouldering. He looks back at Natsu’s face, but he’s lost in his own cyclone of melancholy; he doesn’t notice Gray’s gaze. 

There’s a small sliver of Gray that knows that Natsu is right, that after everything they have been through being together now might push them further apart. But still he shivers with the force of letting go, feels his resolve claw up his throat and explode in a tumult of acid and blood. Natsu watches him throw up without trying to comfort him; there was no need to make this harder. 

“A year.” Gray rasps, doubled over in an agony torn from his core. 

This time, Natsu nods. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then lets his eyelids drift down with the weight of his sorrow. Still without looking at him, Natsu whispers,

“Goodbye, Gray.” 

Natsu turns and walks away. Gray watches him go. 

A year was nothing more than a blink of the world’s constant revolutions, and yet Gray did not want to close his eyes, because then he would see a world without Natsu. At that moment, he could think of nothing more unbearable. 

Even so, Gray stands, shakes some debris from his hair and the emotion from his face as he stalked back into the forest to find Erza. 


End file.
